


Long John Silver - Refictionalization

by qxzenith



Series: Refics and Wall Emergencies - The Wall Will Fall [8]
Category: Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift, The Wall Will Fall, Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Gen, Jerk With A Heart of Gold, TWWF, The Wall Will Fall - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:48:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23901097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qxzenith/pseuds/qxzenith
Summary: In the fall and winter of 2012, the TVTropes team behind Echo Chamber ran an incredible ARG (Alternate Reality Game) called The Wall Will Fall. The premise of the game was that the Fourth Wall between fiction and reality was fracturing, and needed to be repaired as fictional characters fell through into our world. Part of the game mechanic was the writing of fanfiction, involving specific characters, settings, and tropes, to return the characters in question to fiction.This series consists of the pieces I wrote for these events, although only three of my attempts were chosen as canon in the game.This piece was NOT chosen as canon, so this is its first time seeing the light of day. The criteria was that it had to include Long John Silver in his original setting, along with the trope Jerk With A Heart of Gold. We were also requested to include some way for him to still see Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels, as the two had become close during our game.
Relationships: Gulliver & Long John Silver
Series: Refics and Wall Emergencies - The Wall Will Fall [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721554
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	Long John Silver - Refictionalization

**Author's Note:**

> In the fall and winter of 2012, the TVTropes team behind Echo Chamber ran an incredible ARG (Alternate Reality Game) called The Wall Will Fall. The premise of the game was that the Fourth Wall between fiction and reality was fracturing, and needed to be repaired as fictional characters fell through into our world. Part of the game mechanic was the writing of fanfiction, involving specific characters, settings, and tropes, to return the characters in question to fiction.
> 
> This series consists of the pieces I wrote for these events, although only three of my attempts were chosen as canon in the game.
> 
> This piece was NOT chosen as canon, so this is its first time seeing the light of day. The criteria was that it had to include Long John Silver in his original setting, along with the trope Jerk With A Heart of Gold. We were also requested to include some way for him to still see Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels, as the two had become close during our game.

When last he departed the _Hispaniola_ , I never thought I'd see the front of Long John Silver again, and I never thought I'd hope to see him any sooner. He got away clean, and somehow managed to sneak off with him all the gold that we'd salvaged from the island; no one ever quite figured out how he did that, and he's never told me yet. As it was, enough of us had given him our word for my life that we wouldn't see him hang, and a man's word is his word, so we were forced to leave matters at that.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to see him so many years later; after all, he and his had shown themselves more than once before to be well able to find those whom they wanted found. And after all that had passed during that eventful voyage, and all that had entered and left my life in the decades since, I somehow found myself unable to refuse his request.

"We may have been on the wrong sides of each other before today," he told me, in that comfortable, canny way of his, "but you're as smart as paint; I see that when I first met you." It transpired that he had heard of what I had made of myself over the years, and when I saw the magnificent ship he had had made for himself, I couldn't have refused him if I'd wanted to, no matter how little I'd expected to play ship's doctor to this pirate just as Dr. Livesey had, after a fashion, so many years before.

I did find, aboard the ship, that Silver was, well... different from how I remembered him. I suppose the passage of time does that; goodness knows I was different myself from how I had been when he had last known me, but a boy, eager for adventure and quick to save his own skin.

How, you ask, was he different? There were the little things. Something in his eyes seemed softer, more open; when he told me he'd taken a shine to me, I somehow felt that I could believe him, this time around. The men feared him as always, oh yes they did, but they also  _respected_ him.

And big things. Like the First Mate.

The crew were an impressive bunch; all tops of their fields, who'd jumped at the chance to work with a man of Silver's reputation, or been too wary to say no. Except for the First Mate, because there  _was_ no First Mate.

Oh, Captain Silver insisted he was there; he would refer to this Gulliver constantly, sometimes even hold conversations with him, to all appearances talking to the air. Of course no one among us dared contradict, or laugh at, the man whom even Captain Flint once feared to cross; we simply waited out these conversations, and assured him we were taking Gulliver's orders whenever they were given.

I wouldn't call the captain mad; after all, I have heard tell of stranger visions sane men see when at sea for too long. And how could it be madness, when once or twice, in the dark of the night, I could have sworn I almost saw the man myself: a little taller than me, lanky, white-haired, an expression of eager curiosity mixed with intelligence on his face-- before the image shimmered and disappeared, my logical mind assuring me I had imagined the whole thing? And how could it be madness, when there were moments when I was sure I heard his voice, carried like a whisper on the wind?

And, of course, there was the night of the storm. Perhaps a month into our voyage on the  _Sayuchan_ , we hit into the worst storm I had ever seen-- the worst one more seasoned eyes than mine had seen, as well. Naturally, the captain was the first to have himself holed up in his warm, safe, cabin, as the rest of us scrambled to put the ship in a condition where we could be safe battening down ourselves.

These preparations had just been put in order when we all heard a bellow from the bowels of the boat.

"Yar, Gulliver's out there yet!" The man once known as Barbecue came tearing out of his room like the hounds of Hell were on his heels, and none of us, of course, could convince him that a man we could not see was warm and dry, and he could not be pacified with anything less solid than just such an assurance. Eventually, we were forced to leave him in order to seek shelter from the elements ourselves.

I'm proud to say-- though I wouldn't for the world chance him to know it was me-- that I did my best to make sure that he was shielded, at least somewhat, from the elements; I draped the blanket from my own bed across him, as there was none other to be had, before taking refuge in my cabin myself.

Captain Long John Silver spent that night out on the ship's deck, getting soaked by the rain and tossed asunder by the wind, his fingers twitching as they clutched ineffectually at the air, while in his sleep he muttered to his missing friend in a voice that was just to quiet to properly make out.

And before I slept that night, I prayed, like I never had before, prayed for a man whom I was sure could not exist; I prayed that my captain would not lose his Gulliver in that storm.


End file.
